The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1887-11-15
SUMMER SCENES IN MIKADo-LAND
The Jayons River Festivals-Sacred
Temples Converted into Hotels.
From Yokohama Letter.

OOlNSFDoO lIlLO t1OL61S.
From Yokohama Letter
Summer time is the picturesque time in
Japan, too, and the religious festivals are
carnivals of color and gayety, River parties
are favorite diversion, and a fiatboat with
open sides, roof or awning hung round
with lanterns, is the theatre of the most
char.hing scenes in Japanese life. Fancy
one such boat with group of people i'll silk,
Grape, or pretty cotton hmonos, sitting on
q red floorcloth, each with little tray of
dolls dishes filled with scraps and morsels
of dainty things before them The soft
light from the paper lanterns makes it all
rose color, and pretty geisha has a small
space left at one end, where she glides and
poses through the measures of her dance
accompanied by a waiting samsen and a
melancholy singer. Multiply that boat by
thousand and you have river festival as
Toxic delights in every summer. To the
lanterns of the hundreds of boats are added
the lanterns outlining the caves and CALLER
les of the tea houses crowded along the
river bank, and all is light, life gayety, and
the refinement of pleasure. Although sake
flows freely. there is never anything coarse
or boisterous, and the river festivals are al
most poetic. In Toxic there is always a
| festival going on at some one of the many
temples, and there the crowds, the color,
| the merrinent, and the drolleries are fas-
| cinating The japanese give themselves up
easily to pleasure and holiday making, and
abandon themselves to it with the spirit of
children, and at one of these matsuris or
religious festivals, one sees how little foreign
| fashions and ways and Western progress
have really touched the masses of the
people
Few summers resorts offer lower tenn
perature than the SeaportS, the gain of a
little GOODNESS at mountain places being
made up for by the increased dampness, the
number of things that hop, crawl, bite, and
sting, and the absence of many of the custo-
mary comforts. Up in the mountains the
rains are frequent and the midday sun
| scorchng, and the best of japanese hotels
! leave so much to be desired that in the
| general summing up and average the sea-
ports are the best places. Many families
rent temples for few months in summer,
AMI enjoy something between actual Japan
csc life and Adirondack camping The
! priests are not averse to turning few PEN
MES bv the transaction, and the worshiperS
easily find another temple or declare IA ho-
| day. The sacred emblems and all the
| temple accessories are put into the one CEN
! tral shrine-room. sliding screens set in and
! drawn, and the temple is spacious house,
open to the air on all sides and capable of
being divided into as many separate rooms
as the family may require. Often the priests
set the images and altar pieces on a high
! shelf, cover II with Il curtain, and give up
the whole place to foreign tenants. In one
such case near here the broad altar shelf or
| table became recessed sideboard of the
dining room, and the gilded buddhas, kwau-
| nolls and lotus leaves were succeeded by
| rows Of bottles, decanterS and glasses At
one temple il was stipulated that the family
should give up the room III front of the al